Metric Volume

These are the two most common measurements:

Milliliters Liters

A milliliter (that is "milli" and "liter" put together) is a very small amount of liquid.

Here is a milliliter of milk in a teaspoon.

It doesn't even fill the teaspoon!

If you collect about 20 drops of water, you will have 1 milliliter:

20 drops of water makes about 1 milliliter

And a teaspoon can hold about five milliliters:

1 teaspoon of liquid is about 5 milliliters

Milliliters are often written as ml (for short), so "100 ml" means "100 milliliters".

Here we have 150 ml of milk in a measuring cup.

It doesn't say "150" ... it says "50" ... but it is half-way between 100 and 200 so you can figure out it is 150 ml.

Liter

A liter is just a bunch of milliliters put all together. In fact, 1000 milliliters makes up 1 liter:

1 liter = 1,000 milliliters

This jug has exactly 1 liter of water in it.

Liters are often written as L (for short), so "3 L" means "3 Liters".

Milk, soda and other drinks are often sold in liters.

The next time you are at the store take a minute and look on the labels to see how many liters (or milliliters) are in each container!

Liter is abbreviated L (some people use lowercase l, but that looks too much like 1).

Another way of thinking about a liter is:

• A box that is 0.1 meters (10 cm) on each side,
• One square meter that is millimeter thick.

Other Volume Measurements

You may come across these other volume measurements:

Cubic Meter (m³)

Volume is length by length by length, so the basic unit of volume is a cube that is 1 meter on each side.

The Unit is written m³ (cubic meters).

So, a cube that is 1 meter on each side is a cubic meter (m³) ...

... and that is also equal to 1,000 liters.

1 m³ = 1,000 Liters

Megaliters (ML)

A Megaliter is a million liters (1,000,000 L). Useful for measuring large quantities of water, such as in lakes and dams.